Weekly Review

The World Health Organization reported that nearly 960 people have been killed in attacks on medical facilities in the past two years, and researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the United States. ^[1][2] A U.K. study found that children learn better when they aren’t wearing shoes.^[3] A former Fordham University professor accused a theater instructor of bragging to her about having “masturbated with a snake,” and a python in Thailand slithered through the plumbing of a man’s toilet and bit his penis.^[4][5] A new species of boa constrictor was identified on a Caribbean island.^[6] Fishermen in Florida discovered two alligators eating a dead body, and a fisherman in Canada caught a blue lobster.^[7][8] A Ghanaian cleric claimed that intercourse between partners of the same sex “causes earthquakes,” and a Saudi cleric decreed that posing for photographs with cats was forbidden.^[9][10] A father in Saudi Arabia shot a male obstetrician for assisting in the delivery of his daughter’s baby.^[11] The Council of Islamic Ideology proposed a women’s protection bill that instructed husbands to give disobedient wives a “light beating,” and a woman in Maine who fired a .45-caliber handgun into a mattress during a fight with her husband was arrested for domestic violence while wearing a shirt that read “Stop Domestic Violence.”^[12][13]

China announced that it will respond to U.S. plans to install a missile system in South Korea by sending nuclear-armed submarines to the South China Sea.^[14] A report found that the U.S. military’s computer system that operates the nation’s nuclear weapons uses eight-inch floppy disks, and a defector from North Korea used helicopter drones to drop into the country SD cards containing soap operas.^[15][16] A judge in Texas granted a stay of execution to a convicted murderer because the police had hypnotized the main witness in his trial, and the director of an animal shelter in Taiwan committed suicide after she was harassed for euthanizing 700 dogs in two years.^[17][18] A retired New York City police officer was charged with running a prostitution ring; and a soldier in Texas who was arrested for public intoxication attempted unsuccessfully to steal the police car in which he was detained, and then escaped from custody, stole an ambulance, and crashed it into several other police cars before colliding with a pole. ^[19][20] Russia published details about its prototype for a robotic soldier, and it was reported that German scientists are training robots to feel pain.^[21][22]

At a retirement home in Ohio, Henry Heimlich, the 96-year-old inventor of the Heimlich maneuver, performed his procedure for the first time, dislodging a piece of hamburger from an 87-year-old woman’s airway.^[23] Merriam-Webster defined the hot dog as a sandwich.^[24] A judge in Italy dismissed a criminal complaint filed against a 50-year-old man who paid his child support in pizza and calzones, and a man in Texas paid a speeding ticket with 22,000 pennies.^[25][26] In Michigan, a fifth-grader and a seventh-grader were declared cochampions of the U.S. Scripps National Spelling Bee after 25 rounds of competition, and more than 1,000 bees stung to death a hiker in Arizona.^[27][28] In the United Kingdom, a swarm of 20,000 bees chased a Mitsubishi Outlander for two days after their queen became trapped inside. ^[29] An entertainment conglomerate in China announced that its theme parks would drive Disney’s Shanghai park out of business. “Donald Duck,” said the group’s chairman, “is over.”^[30]

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